When I was a restaurant bartender, the waitrons were supposed to give us a percentage of their tips. They rarely did, though we still had to report tips on our tax forms. Please tip your bartenders!

I was a bartender in a night club. The waitresses were supposed to tip me. They wanted me to serve them first, not my customers. We had the occasional fight about that. When there was a slow night, they wanted to tip me less or not at all, but they never offered to pay me more on a busy night. Okay, there was one who did once.

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May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.
Robert A. Heinlein

It's too bad that restaurants don't have a "call waiter" button similar to the airline "call stewardess" button.

Boy! Did that bring back memories. Haven't thought about this in decades, but I remember eateries with the jukebox remote units at each table.The unit also contained a waiter (waitress in those places) call button.

And, of course, turning on the headlights to summon the carhop.

__________________"Kitchen duty is awarded only to those of manifest excellence..." - The Master, Dogen

Extreme PC, waitperson being deemed too contrived. Of course, it's now supported by language studies that gender neutral work titles actually do nothing about or aggravate sexism. The gender neutral term is perceived as representing a person of the stereotypical gender for that job, and there's no acknowledgement that the job can as well be done by the other gender. And cultures in which the language has no gender specific nouns tend to be the most abusive of women.

__________________"Kitchen duty is awarded only to those of manifest excellence..." - The Master, Dogen

Extreme PC, waitperson being deemed too contrived. Of course, it's now supported by language studies that gender neutral work titles actually do nothing about or aggravate sexism. The gender neutral term is perceived as representing a person of the stereotypical gender for that job, and there's no acknowledgement that the job can as well be done by the other gender. And cultures in which the language has no gender specific nouns tend to be the most abusive of women.

Well of course I figured it out. I should have used a winkie in my post.

I don't know anything about gender neutral titles encouraging or discouraging sexism. I think focusing on gendered titles tends to be overly simplistic. As if we only changed all the titles to gender neutral then sexism would disappear.

That is an interesting concept that "cultures in which the language has no gender specific nouns tend to be the most abusive of women." It would make a good PhD thesis.

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Originally Posted by taxlady

Or maybe it was just shorter than waiter/waitress and funnier than waitperson. Of course server works too.

I once saw some software that said not to use the term fireman, use fire person. That sounds like an arsonist to me. How about fire fighter?

I like the title "server." It's gender neutral without appearing contrived. And here in the PC state of CA the FD people are always called firefighters now.

Funny your mention of 'arsonist,' there was a recent case where fires were being set in Hollywood and the Valley, and many of the news media conspicuously used in their reports "an arsonist or arsoness." I didn't even know there was a gender specific title for a woman who feloniously starts fires.